


SOS Part 2 - Prompts and Fillers

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Buckle up, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, just a whole fuckin' mess of it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-04-23 06:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19145317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: /cracks knucklesLet's get to work.





	1. rule of three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drdone.tumblr.com:  
> JOHN'S THOUGHTS WHEN HE GETS GORDON'S DISTRESS SIGNAL

He’ll never forgive himself for not believing it at first.

It’s just—an emergency code from one of his brothers’ ships is designed to override everything else aboard TB5.  _Everything_. John’s entire station alters itself around him, without warning. Everything else gets remanded to a lower priority, proverbially put on hold, and the center of his focus becomes whichever of his brothers needs his help. Because if one of them trips their emergency code, it must  _be_  an emergency.

But it’s all relative. TB2 has literally been  _on fire_  and hobbling out of the sky, and Virgil stubbornly hadn’t keyed his code, nor ditched his bird in the ocean. TB1 has been in a tailspin incline dive, and Scott had just grit his teeth and fixed it his own damn self, with only a little advice from Alan.  _Gordon’s_  had his bird nearly torn in half around him, and all he’d done was bail. Promptly. And then immediately picked a fight with a literal Goliath of a submersible mech over a hundred times his size. But it’s not as though that was a  _real_  emergency.

It’s possible that this job might have skewed their perspectives. Just slightly.

But Gordon’s also the only one who’s ever triggered his code without it being a practiced drill. On a sunny afternoon, with TB4 parked securely inside its hangar and John occupied with backing up Scott and Virgil in the midst of earthquake evac, suddenly his commsphere had flared into high alert around him, and John had nearly had a heart attack. It was the first time in  _years_  that an emergency had felt like an emergency, and suddenly he’d been new to the job again, desperate and panicking, and afraid for one of his brothers until—

“I just wanted to make sure it worked.”

“…to…to make sure it  _worked_?”

John remembers the way adrenaline had been bitter in his mouth and his heart had been pressing against the back of his throat and he’d been almost dizzy from the whiplash of discovering that his little brother was  _fine_ , actually. Parked at home on the island, just doing some standard maintenance.

He hadn’t even had the decency to be ashamed. “ Yeah! Just, you know. Just checking.”

“Of course it fucking  _works_!”

John  _can’t_  remember the last time he’d gotten as angry as Gordon had made him then, just by pushing a few harmless buttons in a particular order. Incandescent, almost unbelievable shock and outrage.

Gordon had just shrugged, far from as apologetic as John thought he should be. “Well, but I didn’t  _know_  that. Few hundred feet under water, I get into some shit, I don’t wanna just take it on  _faith_  that the magic buttons do the thing. I was just thinking about it. I wondered. Now I know.”

“ _I_  knew! You could’ve asked! Or you could’ve  _warned_  me, Gordon! We test these things, of course we know they  _work_!  _Jesus_ , I thought you—”

“Well, but I was just thinking about it. And now I  _also_  know you handle it  _kinda poorly_ , John. I could’ve been dying down here. C'mon. Get your act together.”

John doesn’t remember how he’d closed the call. He might’ve just hung up. He remembers needing to pause and take some slow, deep breaths to even his heartrate back out, to calm back down and get back to Scott and Virgil, and a  _real_  emergency. And the way that the false alarm had been the scariest thing to happen to him since they’d lost their father, and he hadn’t even had his father to go to for reassurance.

He’d done it again a few months later. This time Gordon had sworn up and down that this second time was an accident, put it down to stress and overwork and the fact that their emergency codes are exactly that— _codes_ , random combinations of certain function in their Thunderbirds, which when entered in sequence, trip the personal emergency alarm aboard TB5. It’s for situations when their own personal safety is at risk—if one of the Thunderbirds were ever hijacked, or in the event of a crash or injury that required urgent intervention. Even after the first time, it still ranks among John’s greatest fears, and an emergency call, even if it’s a false alarm, is just absolute hell on his nerves.

“One of these times I’m not going to answer.”

Gordon had just scoffed. “Liar. Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I hit blue when I meant to hit red. It’s been a long day down here. But I’m fine! And I’ll be honest—it might happen again.”

Even if he hadn’t meant it to happen—even if he’d been hoping for the opposite—Gordon had planted just the tiniest, mustard seed of doubt in his brother. Even years after the fact, even in the circumstances, the first thing John thinks when TB4’s emergency code blares around him is that it  _must_  be a false alarm. John’s not much for superstition, but he’s always been oddly susceptible to the idea of things happening in threes. It seems to make sense. Third time’s the charm.

Because there’s nothing on the sensors. There’s too much interference in the area, TB4’s current readouts are just a standby loop of what they were when John last had a good connection, reassuring, green across the board. The same debris clouding the waters and preventing the Chaos Crew from discovering TB4 are likewise muddying TB5’s connection, preventing all but the most basic readouts. He has the ship’s depth and location and a patent commline, he knows TB4 still  _exists_  and that Gordon’s still inside—but one of the only things that works when everything else fails is a tripped emergency code.

Still, there’s that grain of doubt. that moment of memory for the last time his station had blossomed around him, urgent red with the warning that something was wrong. He’d almost been proud of himself, in the moment, that he’d learned from experience and his heart  _hadn’t_  leapt directly up to his throat, his pulse spiking and adrenaline coursing into his system. Instead he’d paused a moment. Toggled the comm back on, and cautiously informed his brother, “Gordon, you’ve activated your emergency code.”

“…Gordon?”

“ _Gordon_!”


	2. the infinite depth of a moment - 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tmntvicky.tumblr.com:
> 
> What about during the flight in TB2, getting Gordon to the hospital

The boys ditch the submarine pods at the surface, leave them bobbing on the waves like little yellow winecorks, so FAB-1 has room to pull into the cargo hatch. This is closing behind them almost before they’re all the way inside, and though there’d been a few brief moments of air and light and sunshine on the surface that made it seem as though everything might just be okay—the hatch closes, and even the high powered halogens seem dim after the sun of a cloudless sky.

FAB-1 has stopped, but Parker is moving, already clambering out of the driver’s seat to circle around and open the door. Penelope stays exactly where she is, still holding Gordon, and beginning to feel, irrationally, as though she can’t let him go. He absolutely isn’t moving, from what she can tell he’s barely breathing, and she’s never before in her life held someone who felt so  _broken_  in her arms. She can’t tell what’s wrong, only that it must be very nearly everything. The thought occurs to her, flawlessly logical but curiously distant, that this must mean he’s dying.

Except for the obvious fact that he just  _can’t_.

Around them, FAB-1 cracks open like an oyster as Parker moves around it, pulling cleverly concealed switches and levers, splitting the vehicle apart along invisible hinges and seams, coming apart to allow Scott and Alan better access to the back seat. It’s not a small car, but it’s suddenly crowded. Automatically, protective, Penelope feels her entire self curl inward, holding Gordon even closer as her head bows and her shoulders fall, as though allowing anyone to take him away will mean losing him forever.

“Let him go,” Scott’s order is sharp and immediate, and his hands are brusque and ungentle as he pushes her back. She has to fight past her instincts to let him do so, reluctantly loosening her hold, though the weight of Gordon’s head and shoulders remain still cradled in her lap, and she stays as still as she can manage. Alan’s circled around to the other side of the car, with no need for similar instruction, and climbed up behind the folded forward driver’s seat, crouching, poised and ready for whatever Scott expects of him.

Scott doesn’t even need to say anything. There’s no fussing and fretting from either of them, no tender touches or fearfully posessive search for his pulse at the neck, as though the beat of his heart is something that belongs to her. Penelope had tried, but hadn’t been able to feel anything through the thick neoprene of her gloves, and had scared herself with the thought that there might just be nothing left  _to_  feel. Scott and Alan don’t bother with such trivialities. They just rearrange his limbs where he lies across the bench seat beside her, quick but careful, and looking for signs of something that she can’t see.

They don’t bother to waste time with anything like a stretcher or a backboard, and Penelope feels a flutter of disconnected panic for the condition of Gordon’s spine, and the shattered state she’d found him in. For a moment she wants to protest that they might hurt him worse, but she restrains herself, out of sudden horror that she might’ve already done so. It hadn’t occurred to her underwater, pulling him from the wreckage of his poor twice-broken submersible, feeling the dead weight of his limbs trailing heavily, limp in the water, and only wanting to get back aboard FAB-1 as fast as she could. She’d been careful, of course, as careful as she could’ve been—but she hasn’t ever saved a life this way before. She still doesn’t know if she actually has.

Between the pair of them, wordlessly, Scott and Alan seem to agree to take a calculated risk in taking him away from her, and they do so unceremoniously. Scott nods curtly at Alan, and Alan moves obediently into position, offering a brisk count of “one-two-three”. They both seem to know exactly how and where to place their hands, handling their brother like he’s no more than a complex, cumbersome object that needs to be taken from A to B, where A is the backseat of FAB-1, and B is a medbay that Parker’s already folded open, ready and waiting at the side of the cargo hatch. He seems to know to move automatically back, as Scott and Alan cross the floor, to gently deposit their brother into the slight hollow inside, and immediately go to work on and around him.

This process underway, Parker also knows to return to FAB-1, and help Penelope shakily to her feet, and then out of the vehicle. He steers her purposefully across the cargo bay to the head of the gurney, and his hand lingers just long enough to give her elbow a reassuring squeeze.

Alan’s engaged a bright holographic comm at the far end of the gurney, and Scott’s gone promptly to work with some sort of handheld scanner that Penelope’s never seen before, though she pays it very little attention, fixated on Gordon. Immediately up from the depths, briefly beneath the sunlight he hadn’t opened his eyes to see—he’d looked almost peaceful, almost like he might’ve only been sleeping. 

She’d hated the hope that had fluttered in her chest, then, because she’d known it for a lie. She’d had to pull his helmet off once he was safely aboard FAB-1, to keep him from suffocating in the absence of air from the near empty O2 canister still slotted into his helmet. It had held out only just long enough for them to reach him, but was failing by the time she arrived. The onset of hypoxia would’ve worn an unfairly handsome face, if it hadn’t been for the bluish tint of his lips, the bruising shadows beneath his eyes.

Impulsively, as Scott announces the transfer of a medical scan to Tracy Island, Penelope reaches out to brush a hand through Gordon’s hair. It’s a gesture more for her own sake than his, because he seems far and away too far gone to have even the remotest idea that she’s there, or that he’s been found, or that he’s safe—or that there’s no one here with him now who could even begin to bear to lose him, so of course it simply won’t be allowed to happen. Her fingers weave deep between his curls, thick and damp with the humidity of the ocean air, and she softly whispers something that stays trapped within the confines of her helmet, unheard by him or anyone else.

The comm at the far end of the gurney flashes and flares with the transmitted results of the medscan. Penelope’s gaze is torn unwillingly away from the terrible stillness of Gordon’s face by the sudden bloom of bright red and blinking icons and indicators, heart and lungs and brain, alarms beeping with mortal urgency. With her free hand Penelope numbly reaches up to toggle her radio back on, just in time to hear the steel in their Grandmother’s voice as it comes over the open comm line—

“Virgil,  _no_. Forget about Tracy Island. You need to get that boy to a  _hospital_.  _Now_.”

From the comm at the end of the the gurney, the next logical place for her gaze to be drawn is towards Scott, still standing tall where he leans over his brother, grim but determined. “FAB. Virgil, get John to clear you a flight path. No further than fifteen minutes out. Ten would be better.”

“I’ve got one,” John cuts in, silent up til now, but listening as ever. “Already clear, EOS just coded your flight vector. GDF fliers are on approach to offer an escort to their nearest medical facility.”

His voice is crisp in her ear, though she’s heard true calm from him often enough before to perceive the distinction of deep anxiety now—but he’s not as fierce as Virgil is, answering, “Pushing all power to turbo, Mach 9 in t-minus six seconds. Tell them to call clearances ahead, there’s nothing they’ve got in the skies that’ll get ahead of me. And brace yourselves. Touchdown in eight minutes.”

Scott’s been  _inhumanly_  calm, and he’s no less so as he answers, as though this is anything even remotely like a normal rescue. “FAB, Virgil. Keep her steady, we’re gonna get him on O2 and prepped for the ER. Eight minutes.”

Eight minutes seems like barely any time at all and an yet still an eternity, all twisted together, when this whole ordeal has stretched agonizingly from minute to minute, second to second, ever since they’d first learned that Gordon was in trouble. Penelope has no idea how long any of this has taken, time seems to have lost almost all meaning. And even as her fingers continue to gently tangle through his hair, gloved fingertips pressing lightly against his scalp, and her heart breaking quietly, she wonders how much longer it will be and how she can possibly endure it.

And then he stops breathing.


	3. the infinite depth of a moment - 2

It happens with such subtlety and with so little outward indication. If she hadn’t been watching him so intently, she would’ve missed it happening. She’d watched his chest slowly rise, and then slowly fall—and then nothing. For second after torturous second. Penelope freezes up entirely at the realization—aware in the suddenly infinite depth of the moment that she should  _do_  something; say something; beg someone to help him—but she finds herself somehow unable to do anything but just stare at him, fixated but helpless.

And then he moves, for the first time she’s seen, twisting his head beneath her frozen hand as his entire body seizes, a last gasping burst of exertion as his lungs stubbornly refuse to give up the ghost. He draws the sort of desperate breath that’s hoarse and raw with the memory of his voice, but this falters almost immediately. His eyes open—bright and fixed and unseeing—but flicker closed again with a laboured sigh that fades once more into nothing, as he goes limp and deathly still again. At the far end of the gurney the comm shrieks a new alarm.

Of course this changes everything.

“ _Fuck_ —Alan!” Scott’s icy calm evaporates in an instant, and Penelope finds herself swiftly and bodily removed from the side of the gurney by Parker, as Alan takes her place, stepping out from his eldest brother’s shadow, into her place and up to the task at hand.

Dimly she registers that Parker’s pulled her away and yet hasn’t let her go, his hands steadying and firm on her shoulders. Hers have come up to clasp desperately together over her heart, holding her breath without meaning to, as she watches the boys work. She finds her gaze drawn to Scott, but it’s clearly Alan who takes the lead, and Scott starts unpacking assorted equipment from the medbay, laying it out as quickly as his little brother needs it; medical instruments that seem as though they’d be out of place in the hands of someone Penelope still perceives as a child.

There are twelve years between Scott and Alan, but the exchange that fires between them is between professionals, and Scott is entirely deferential—

“Intubate?”

Alan shakes his head, grim. “Too risky midflight.  _He_  could do it, I might just make things worse. We can ventilate without tubing him. He’s still got a pulse, but his airway’s bad and his O2 sats are trash. Shouldn’t be lying flat. Need to turn his head back to neutral.”

Scott winces. “What’s the medscan got on his c-spine?”

Alan doesn’t bother to look at it, focused intently on his brother, as he gently places gloved hands on either side of his face, and slowly turns Gordon’s head, until the back of his skull lies flat on the gurney. “Inconclusive. Always is, vertebrae are too irregular for the sensor to get a clear read in the field. Feels okay, but I don’t wanna chance it. Collarbone’s for  _sure_  broken.”

“Brace?”

A shake of a bowed blond head. “After, let the medics do it. Harder to get an ETT placed with it on. Come around, I need manual stability while I do that jaw thing.”

Scott obeys immediately, taking the order and taking Alan’s place with a deference that Penelope doesn’t think she’s seen since his father was still alive. There’s an incredible synchronicity to the pair of them, working in tandem, but there’s an eerie, clinical competence about Alan that seems like it shouldn’t be possible when he’s doing something so desperately intense as finding a way to make his brother start breathing again.

Whatever Alan does requires placing his hands on his brother’s face from the head of the gurney, and applying deliberate, upward pressure to the squarish curve of his jawbone. “C'mon, Gordon,” Alan mutters, almost angrily, and after another agonizing stretch of very little time at all, there’s finally a broken draw of breath as bluish lips part slightly, the compromise of his airway resolves, and he starts to breathe again, albeit in feeble, catching little gasps.

The breath Penelope hadn’t meant to hold explodes out of her, and she feels Parker’s hands tighten slightly against her shoulders as she sways on her feet. It’s been only seconds, but she still feels almost lightheaded with relief, as Alan cracks a grin and Scott’s posture loses some of its rigidity, though he snaps back into action as Alan promptly takes charge again, “ _Okay_. I want him closer to upright. Keep his back straight, but tilt about thirty-degrees, then we just gotta get a mask on. Grab me an NRB.”

Whatever this is, Scott’s already reaching for it, as Alan keys a command into a console at the side of the medbay, and there’s a soft hydraulic whirr as the gurney tilts slowly upward—just enough to ease the downward force of gravity on struggling lungs that need all the help they can get. He’s rested a hand almost absently against Gordon’s chest as he does this, as though reassuring his brother that he’s still safe, still taken care of.

There’s an O2 tank at the foot of the gurney, and Scott’s connected a winding thread of plastic tubing to its outlet. He offers Alan the associated mask; a clear, rubbery plastic thing that Alan reaches for, and then takes without looking away from Gordon.

“Flow?”

“Fifteen litres. More, even, it’ll go higher past the indicator.”

Oxygen hisses on, and Alan presses a fingertip over the one way valve inside the mask, and the attached plastic reservoir inflates in his hand. Satisfied, he carefully presses the mask over Gordon’s nose and mouth, secures the elastic strap behind his head, and then just watches, one hand lightly on his shoulder.

“…Okay,” he says again, after a long few seconds of watching pure oxygen flow into his brother’s lungs, as his breathing slowly stabilizes. “Yeah, okay.”

Scott’s still hovering at his elbow, head and shoulders taller than his youngest brother, and when Penelope catches a glimpse of his face, there’s a brightness in his eyes as his gaze flits between his siblings. He steps closer to his little brother and wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him halfway into a quick, fierce little embrace. His voice is hushed, but chokes only slightly as he says, “Good job.”

Alan just nods, and his fingers against Gordon’s shoulder clench slightly, clinging to him. “He taught me everything I know.”

“You did good. He’s gonna be  _so_  goddamn proud of you.”

Alan takes an audibly shaky deep breath, his hand leaving Gordon’s shoulder, just to come up and wipe briefly at his eyes as he leans wearily, automatically against his big brother. “He always said when he was training me—‘do it like it’s one of us’.” Alan coughs, clearing a sudden break in his voice and a tightness from his throat before concluding, “Guess that’s why.”

Scott’s arm around Alan’s shoulders tightens briefly for one more moment, and then he lets go, steps away to lean over the gurney again. “What’s next?”

“Just keep him stable. Should be six minutes out.”

“Five,” corrects Virgil’s disembodied voice, loud over the cargo hold PA, a sudden reminder that he’s heard everything happening below and had to fly implacably through it. There’s an immeasurable depth of pride in his voice, as he adds, “Good job, Al.”

At the end of the gurney the comm chimes softly, the first non-urgent noise it’s made in the course of the whole horrible process, and John appears, adding, “Medics are ready and waiting on the runway. I’ve sent the Med scan ahead to their trauma center and authorized a feed of current telemetry from his suit.” He hesitates briefly, and Penelope wonders at how helpless he must feel as he asks, “What else can I do?”

Scott’s answer is immediate, almost more of an order. “Go home.”

John is unaccustomed to taking orders from Scott, even in the circumstances, and he pauses. “Kayo’s still…”

“Kayo’s always taken care of herself. Go home, get Grandma. Come to the hospital. We need you both. Can you take TB1?”

John hesitates again, but nods. “Been awhile,” he cautions.

“Well, you let  _him_  fly it yesterday and he nearly dropped it in the Pacific. At least today I’m giving you permission.”

Yesterday seems a lifetime ago. Yesterday was the last time she spoken to Gordon, and that the last time she spoke to Gordon might very well become the last time she  _ever_  speaks to Gordon. She can’t even clearly remember what she’d said, just that it was as airily dismissive as ever; that she’d told him he shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have stolen his brother’s Thunderbird and flown halfway around the world in an effort to spare her even the  _possibility_  of losing someone important.

Her eyes were already damp with unshed tears, emotion welling up unbidden as she’d watched Scott and Alan work on their brother, and now they begin to trail down her cheeks. Her breath catches, but she still has her helmet on, and until her shoulders start to shake and her knees buckle slightly, no one notices that she’s started to cry.


	4. the infinite depth of a moment - 3

Her tears should absolutely not take priority over Gordon’s actual  _life_ —but Alan seems to have him well in hand, and Scott turns automatically away from the gurney as Parker starts to fret and fuss over her.

Penelope lifts one hand to wave the pair of them off, and with the other attempts to wipe away her tears, but her knuckles knock against the plexiglass of her helmet and another sob catches in her throat and she  _hates_  that she’s going all to pieces at a time like this, when her feelings are so obviously the last thing anyone should be concerned with. Her frustration with herself doesn’t abate her tears in the slightest, and if anything, she starts to cry harder.

Scott’s hands land on her shoulders, squeezing just briefly, before he reaches up and his fingers deftly undo the latches that keep her helmet closed and sealed. It hasn’t yet occurred to her to take this off, and as Scott gently does it for her, she’s surprised at how stale the air had become within the confines of her helmet. Automatically she covers her face, her fingers pressing tears from her eyes as she takes a few deep breaths, trying to push past this absolute foolishness.

“I’m sorry,” she starts, faltering, stopping to push back the cowl of her wetsuit and running her hands through her hair, in an attempt to seem like she’s pulling herself together, though this is nothing even remotely like the truth. Scott’s put himself in between her and the medbay, and she can’t help leaning over, trying to peer past him, still anxious. “Is he…he’s breathing now? He won’t stop again?”

Scott shouldn’t have to reassure her, but he does anyway, still with a comforting, steadying hold of her shoulder, her helmet hanging from his other hand. “Not if we can help it.”

Anxiety still courses through her, frothing and rabid beneath her surface, trying to fight its way past her desire to keep her composure, for Gordon’s sake if nobody else’s. Despite her best efforts, some of it slips loose, free-floating, disconnected panic, “He’s terribly hurt, isn’t he? Did I make it worse?  _Oh_ —I couldn’t bear it, if I…”

“ _No_ , Penelope.” Scott shakes his head, cutting her off before she can speculate. “You got him. And he’s here, and he’s safe now, and we’re going somewhere where they’ll help him. Nothing else matters.” His hand slides down her arm, taking hold of hers. He squeezes her fingers, and then gives her hand a gentle tug. “Come on,” he coaxes, and though she resists for the briefest moment, afraid to be in the way again, after a moment she allows him to guide her back to the side of the gurney, as though it’s her rightful place.

It’s only been a minute or so, but even just the beginnings of medical intervention make things look just a little less dire. Gordon’s still pale and bruised, and he’s still motionless, inert and unresponsive where he lies—but somehow a little better. And breathing. Penelope finds herself transfixed once more by the slow, almost mechanical movement of his chest, rising and falling again.

“See? Alan’s got it under control. He’s in good hands.”

Penelope’s gaze cuts briefly away from Gordon to his baby brother, busily going about the business of continued first aid. Alan’s clambered up onto the end of the medbay, kneeling halfway into the gurney, and contrived to remove the glove from his brother’s uninjured right hand. With a blade sharper than she likes to think about, for as easily as it glides through reinforced neoprene, he cuts the sleeve of Gordon’s suit open, bares his forearm all the way to the elbow. Now he hunts for a vein with an IV line ready and waiting for placement. Penelope has to look away, as she swallows past the lump in her throat and attempts a smile for Scott’s benefit. “Thank heaven for Alan.”

“I have been.” A weary smile of his own softens Scott’s expression slightly. “And for you. You saved his life, Penelope.”

Penelope shakes her head. She still hasn’t quite connected what she’s done to the notion that it’s the only reason that Gordon’s still alive. That he’d just be  _dead_  if she’d done otherwise, that his brothers couldn’t have saved him without her. She doesn’t like to think of it. “He’d have done it for me,” she says instead, shrugging deliberately out from beneath Scott’s gratitude, when the question of whether or not Gordon’s going to pull through this still isn’t quite settled.

“ _He’d_  have done it for  _anyone_. It’s his job,” Scott corrects her, a bold move at any time, but only allowed to slide now because she’s feeling quite so fragile, so worn from spent adrenaline and effort. But he boldly goes even further, going on to add, “Kinda think there’s a pretty short list of people you’d have done it for, Penny. I’m just glad he’s on it.”

Well. Of course he is. Probably nearer to the top than she’s realized before now. This is another item on the list of things she’s not quite prepared to think about, and so she just nods, embarrassed. Her hand comes up of its own volition, and she wants desperately to take his hand, touch him again; just some gentle, comforting little gesture. But she’s no longer sure of her ability to touch him without harming him further, and so she hesitates, pauses in the act of reaching towards him, and lets her hand fall back to the edge of the gurney.

“Will he wake up?” she asks aloud, not sure if she’s directing the question to Scott or Alan, or just asking for the sake of having something to say.

Alan looks up at the question, but doesn’t answer, glancing at Scott instead. A look passes between them, impossible to miss, and not the simple, affirmative answer she’d been naively waiting for. It belies the fact that, for all his brothers’ professional calm and outward reassurance, Gordon isn’t out of the woods yet. Far from it. Maybe this is one of the questions that’s not meant to be asked, in moments like this.

“…For now, it’s better that he doesn’t,” Scott answers, eventually, trying to find a positive way to spin the question of whether or not his brother will wake up again, when they haven’t yet moved past the possibility that he just might not. “Not for nothing, Penelope—because I get it, I swear I do—but he’s in a  _lot_  of pain. More than I want him to wake up to.”

“Oh.” This, of course, is obvious—but hearing it stated diminishes the relief she’d managed to find and cling to. Her fingers twitch towards him again, an involuntary and entirely atypical gesture, and fuitle, as though anything she could do for him now would help in the slightest. Penelope isn’t, despite her long association with International Rescue, anything even remotely like a first responder. This is the nearest she’s ever been to someone in such dire straits, and the experience has left her so deeply distressed as to unsettle her very foundation. She feels at once entirely unlike herself, and yet utterly transparent to those around her, who really have more important things to concern themselves with than the fact that her lower lip has suddenly started to tremble again, at the notion that someone so dear to her should be in so much pain, even if he doesn’t know it yet.

Overhead, Virgil’s voice booms onto the loudspeaker again, “On approach, touchdown in two minutes. I’ll take her in as easy as I can. Parker, we’ll need FAB-1 out so their medical team can get in. Scott, prepare the mod for touchdown. Sounds like it’s about to get kinda crowded in there.”

Penelope’s fingers clench slightly at the edge of the gurney, and she almost doesn’t feel it when Scott briefly clasps her shoulder again, before stepping away, leaving her alone with Gordon and Alan. Alan’s moved on from the IV, and gone to work with an assortment of restraints and straps, making sure his brother can be safely moved, when the time comes to do so. Penelope’s heart does something terrible within her chest, as she realizes that he’ll be taken away from her again, whisked away into the hands of people who can help him, but still gone from her sight.

“You should talk to him,” Alan pipes up, the first thing he’s said that hasn’t directly referred to the process of keeping his brother alive, and the first thing he’s said to her. He still seems a little sheepish, shy the way he always is when he draws her attention, and amends, “I mean, you can, if you wanna. We’re on approach now, just a couple more minutes. And they’ll have him for a few hours at least before we get to see him again. You could talk to him. It’d help.”

Despite everything, there’s a streak of broad suspicion that runs through Penelope, and she can’t help but question the motivations of such an instruction. “Would it?” Her fingers twitch again, and she finally gives in, reaches out to trace her fingertips, just lightly, across the back of Gordon’s hand. “Can he hear me?”

Alan shrugs, still halfway kneeling on the gurney next to his brother. “Hard to say. He can’t  _not_  hear you. I know he’d want to, if he could. C'mon, Lady P.”

Penelope pauses, uncertain of what to say, especially within Alan’s hearing. “I’ve a mind to tell him he’s scaring me terribly,” she admits, and her gaze returns to Gordon’s face. Even though he doesn’t  _look_  as though he can hear her, something about looking at him when she speaks seems to make it easier to summon the words, and she continues, haltingly at first— “….because he—because you  _are_ , darling. Gordon.  _Oh_ —Gordon, you’re scaring me,  _really_ , and when I  _know_  I told you not to, when I told you never to scare me like this again—because I almost can’t bear it. I can’t stand to see you like this, I hate to know how you’re hurt and that we might’ve lost you, that we might lose you still—just…please. Come back.”


End file.
